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The volume before us is the fourth in the series of proceedings of what used to be the Israel Colloquium for the History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science. This Colloquium has in the meantime been renamed. It now bears the name of Yehoshua Bar-Hillel (1915-1975). Bar-Hillel was an eminent philosopher of science, language, and cognition, as well as a fearless fighter for enlightenment and a passionate teacher who had a durable influence on Israeli philosophical life. The essays collected in this volume have of course this much in common, that they are all in, of, and pertaining to science. They also share the property of having all been delivered before live, and often lively, audiences in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv, in the years 1984-1986. As is customary in the volumes of this series, the essays and commentaries presented here are intended to strike a rather special balance between the disciplines to which the Colloquium is dedicated. The historical and sociological vantage point is addressed in Kramnick's and Mali's treatment of Priestley, in Vickers' and Feldhay's studies of the Renaissance occult, and in Warnke's and Barasch's work on the imagination. From a philosophical angle several concepts, all material to the methodology of science, are taken up: rule following, by Smart and Margalit; analysis, by Ackerman; explanation, by Taylor; and the role of mathematics in physics, by Levy-Leblond and Pitowsky.
Sommario
Eighteenth-Century Science and Radical Social Theory: The Case of Joseph Priestley's Scientific Liberalism.- Science, Politics, and the New Science of Politics: A Comment.- Critical Reactions to the Occult Sciences During the Renaissance.- Critical Reactions to the Occult: A Comment.- Works of the Imagination.- Works of the Imagination: A Comment.- Wittgenstein, Following a Rule, and Scientific Psychology.- How to Outsmart the Rules: A Comment.- Why Does Physics Need Mathematics?.- Why Does Physics Need Mathematics? A Comment.- Analysis and Its Paradoxes.- Explanation and Practical Reason.- Symposium: "The Other Newton" - The Theological and Alchemical Writings.- Gravity and Alchemy.- Isaac Newton: Theologian.- Newton and the Origins of Fundamentalism.- Symposium: Niels Bohr Centennial.- Man as Spectator and Actor in the Drama of Existence.- Bohr's Response to Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen.- The Genesis of Bohr's Complementarity Principle and the Bohr-Heisenberg Dialogue.
